Anniversaries
by Brooklyn Writes
Summary: Five times Claire marks the anniversary of Culloden
1. Chapter 1

Claire's nights are short. Exhaustion is the de facto reality of raising an infant, but, she's found, it's also an extraordinary numbing agent, one she's embraced in this new era of heavy limbs and heavier heart. Today the light through the curtains was just beginning to take on that soft, gauzy quality of early morning when the baby started screaming. Claire woke with a jolt at the sound, though the wisps of highland heather and rain that gave texture to her dreams followed her into consciousness, the mournful wail of bagpipes echoing through her bones in tune with her daughter's cries. Frank snored on beside her as she carefully pulled her legs free of the blankets and stood up without waking him, marveling briefly at this practiced movement of new motherhood.

The bedroom door latched shut with a soft clink behind her, Claire padded barefoot down the dark hall to the nursery where Brianna continued to fuss. This house in Boston was too big for them, Claire had thought so from the start, and even more so in these pre-dawn hours when its crisp, neat lines felt menacing in their newness, its rooms too empty of much needed ghosts. They'd moved in months ago, but when once she'd wanted nothing more than to fill a home with material objects, here she'd barely bothered to decorate. Even the nursery was sparse, a quilt sent by Mrs. Graham and hung over the back of the rocking chair in the corner the only real color in the room Claire now entered to soothe her frantic daughter.

The window, left open the night before in a joyous but careless celebration of the first signs of that stubborn New England spring, now whistled with a sharp breeze.

"Poor darling, you must be near frozen," Claire whispered as she latched the window and bent to scoop the baby from her crib. Holding her close to her chest, she sank into the rocking chair, murmuring quiet words of nonsense and comfort all the while. She ran a thumb over the soft red fuzz on her daughter's head as she rocked her. Back and forth, back and forth, the chair creaking in protest with each pass. Soon enough Bree stopped her cries and began to nurse, her small fist held lightly against her mother's breast.

Claire sat there a long time after the baby was full and sleeping soundly again, watching the sky outside turn grey and then ever brighter over the rooftops of Boston. She could hear Frank humming to himself in the shower now, could hear the announcer delivering the morning news from the radio in the living room. The predictable sounds of respectable domesticity. She closed her eyes to summon again the bagpipes of her dreams, the rush of the wind and water, unwilling to hear the rest of the world today. And she kept her eyes closed, feigning sleep, when Frank stopped briefly in the nursery doorway on the way to his morning lecture. She would not speak to him today either, would not make the effort to perform their usual small talk routine of asking politely after each other's sleep and breakfast preferences. No, not today.

Today would be hers. Hers and Brianna's alone. Frank turned off the radio before leaving, granting her the silence her mind craved. She reveled in it. Let her dreams creep back over her, let the memories seep to the surface until everything was aching and raw again, the searing pain of separation fresh. Only then did she rise to reopen the window, the rush of cool air a balm to her skin and soul both. She pulled Mrs. Graham's quilt and its greens and browns and blues from the back of the chair and wrapped it around the two of them, cocooning her daughter in the colors of the highlands, in the faint smell of woodsmoke still lingering in the fibers from Mrs. Graham's days of of stitching in the drawing room of the manse. And sitting there, still in her silky nightgown and with Bree in her arms, Claire cried. She cried with deep, rib splitting, wracking sobs, the kind she hadn't let herself cry in a year. Her tears bringing forth all the joy and pain she carried around for this little bundle in her arms that she loved so fiercely and had hated so immensely. She cried for the father her daughter would never know, for the husband she'd sacrificed to war and history and honor. For the terrible choice the fates of the universe had forced on her.

When no more tears would come, her eyes puffy and sore, Claire sang to the baby, sang all the little Gaelic tunes Jamie and the others had known, her mouth remembering the shape of the words even as their meaning escaped her. And finally, she talked. Head bent over the child in her lap she whispered to Bree of the beauty of the mountains, the lochs, and the sanctuary of Lallybroch. Of her father's, her real father's, sense of humor and strong arms. The entire story of her miracle existence, of the love and bloodshed and heartbreak that had led to her, the one thing they had wanted so desperately, arrived so tragically too late. Whispered until she found herself smiling at the slanted blue eyes gazing up at her, seemingly engrossed in the tale.

"Oh, Bree. Oh, Bree, how I wish he could meet you. How much he loved you." She bent to kiss the smooth skin of her daughter's head, her voice rough with use now and the words catching in her throat. "How much I loved him. Dear god, how much I loved him."

When Frank returned that evening, the fiery red clouds of a threatening spring storm visible outside the nursery window, it was to find his wife sound asleep still in the rocking chair, her feet tucked under her, curls wild about her face, her daughter asleep on her chest. He sighed, closed the window quietly against the coming rain, and left the room. A historian, he knew April 16th. Of course he did. He knew enough to let them be.


	2. Chapter 2

The emergency appendectomy was the last task of a very long day that had also included sorting out a child who had swallowed a marble, setting two broken arms and one fractured ankle, and dealing with the condescending drivel of her least favorite attending in the hospital. Every bone and muscle in Claire's own body ached, hold over adrenaline from that last surgery the only thing still propelling her forward movements as she washes up and changes her clothes before heading home. She tries to remember the last time she's left the hospital before the sun was down, the last time she'd eaten dinner across the table from her daughter, her husband. Too long, she imagines, and wonders briefly too when the last time was that she'd even eaten a full meal at all. For better or worse, she'd grown used to surviving on quick snacks managed between patients, and she can feel every rib distinctly as she slides on a clean sweater. The metal on metal clank of her locker slamming shut echoes through the empty room as she fishes in her purse for her keys.

Pulling the car into the driveway a few minutes later, Claire can see from the driver's seat that there's a slight orange glow coming from Frank's office, likely a light he forgot to turn off when all the papers were graded and stacked neatly in their folder for morning. But everything else about the house is dark and quiet. Content. It's a house that has lived a full day and settled down to sleep without her. The idea gives Claire the usual pang of quick guilt, the uneasy twist of the stomach. She shoves it down. This is her life, these were her choices, and she doesn't regret them. Not all of them anyway.

In the kitchen Frank's left her a plate of dinner, and it looks lonely in the harsh lighting of their mostly empty refrigerator. Claire kicks off her shoes and tosses her coat on a hook before sighing and melting into the sturdy wooden chair at the dining table, relieved to her very marrow to be off her feet. She picks at the cold chicken on the plate with her fingers. Wonders idly if Frank is fucking the babysitter of Bree's that cooked it. It's dry and tasteless, and she can't decide if she'd care more about the matter if the food was actually any good. It's in the middle of a particularly uncharitable thought about the woman that Claire is interrupted.

"Mama, why are you sitting here in the dark?" Brianna stands in the kitchen doorway, her long red hair in a careful braid and the sleeves of her pajamas a few inches too short, and Claire feels a twinge at that, that she hasn't had time to notice even how tall her daughter has gotten.

"Oh, don't mind me darling. The real question is, why are you not in bed?" Claire asks, directing a gentle frown in her daughter's direction. Bree shifts her weight to lean against the doorframe and holds up the piece of paper in her hand and says, "I heard you get home. And I need you to sign this for our field trip to the zoo tomorrow."

Claire pushes the dinner plate aside. "Of course I'll sign it, come here." She beckons her over with a wave of an arm. "I thought your trip wasn't until the 17th though?"

Bree hands her the permission form, shaking her head. "That's tomorrow Mama, the 17th."

Claire freezes, just for a second, and, if Brianna notices that for her mother all air has gone out of the room, she doesn't let on. Instead she continues, "Miss Murphy says we're even going to see elephants! Have you ever seen an elephant Mama?"

Claire stands abruptly, the chair scraping roughly along the kitchen floor as she does so. She doesn't look at her daughter as she takes the three steps away from the table to the junk drawer, using the search for a pen as a chance to take a deep breath and put her emotions back together. Her back to Brianna, she answers as she paws through the drawer. "Yes, I have seen an elephant actually. In Africa. I wasn't much older than you are now. Even got to ride one." She grabs a pen and makes to turn back around when she catches sight of two little white candles in the back of the drawer, left over from some school project of Bree's or some half-hearted plan of her own to decorate for a dinner party. She picks up the candles too and nudges the drawer shut with her hip.

"You really got to ride an elephant?" Bree's eyes are wide as she looks up at her mother, in awe at this latest revelation from a woman who shares so few of her secrets.

"Yes, Bree, now will you do something with me? Will you light these candles with me?" Claire moves in quick, frantic bursts as she holds up the two little white sticks before setting them on the table and reaching across to the stove for the matches. Bree is quiet at the change in subject, but slides softly into the chair beside her mother's, watching as the match brings both candles to life in a sharp flare of color and bright flame. In the darkened kitchen, they glow with an intensity greater than their size. Claire blows out the match and rests a hand on her daughter's head, smoothing her hair gently down the back of her neck. The two watch the candles burn for a while without speaking, the house so quiet and still that Claire swears she can hear her own heart beating thunderously in her chest. Eventually Bree yawns and starts to squirm just slightly in her chair.

"Mama, why are we looking at candles?"

Claire lets out a little breath of air and sits back down, turning to face Bree with a small, soft smile. The candlelight catches the tears pooled in her eyes, deep amber liquid. "Well, Smudge, your field trip tomorrow," she gestures towards the permission form, "it reminded me that today is the 16th." She pauses, rubbing at the base of the thumb where a small, faded scar in the shape of a J sits. "And I had a, well, a friend, I suppose, someone important to me, who I lost on April 16th. It was a long, long time ago, but I thought he would like very much for us both to remember him today." Brianna reaches then, wraps her fingers around her mother's on the table, and Claire notices again that her little girl is growing up, her hands those of a child now, no longer round with baby fat.

"I'm sorry you're sad Mama," Bree whispers, and it's that small statement that breaks Claire, just a bit, and she opens her arms to pull her daughter out of her chair and into a tight hug. Because she is sad, tremendously so, but to let the full weight of that sadness surface would be to surrender to it, to give up on scratching out this existence she's pieced together for herself. But she does let slip some of the tears she's been holding in, watches them disappear into Bree's red hair, before quickly wiping the rest clear with the edge of her thumb. She pulls back. "I'll be just fine Bree, really, thank you." She scribbles a distracted signature onto the paper she'd set aside. "Now here's your form, and you run up to bed. You don't want to be too tired for the elephants in the morning." She offers her another watery smile. Bree offers one back before turning to leave the room with a quiet, "I love you Mama." She's halfway up the stairs before Claire gets out a response. "I love you too," she sighs to her daughter, to the candles, to any and all old ghosts so far away.

Claire will sit a few minutes more with her thoughts, her tired head propped up on her hand. Blinking slowly, she'll watch the candles burn down into elaborate piles of melted wax on the table. She won't eat anymore of the chicken. She'll be up and out of the house the next morning and back to the halogen bulbs and frenetic energy of the hospital before either her husband or Bree are awake. It will be Frank who answers the phone, Frank who gets the call from the school a few hours later wondering why one Claire Fraser signed the permission form for Brianna Randall and is he quite sure that everything's really alright at home.


End file.
